Open AccessBush’s ‘Beyond Containment’ strategy toward the Eastern Bloc in 1989 within the US Foreign Policy context
Author(s) -
David Mareček
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
politics in central europe
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.166
H-Index - 6
eISSN - 2787-9038
pISSN - 1801-3422
DOI - 10.2478/pce-2021-0016
Subject(s) - foreign policy , containment (computer programming) , context (archaeology) , administration (probate law) , political science , cold war , international relations , foreign relations , great power , power (physics) , political economy , foreign policy analysis , politics , public administration , international trade , law , economic history , sociology , economics , history , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , computer science , programming language
This paper explores the foreign policy of US President George H. W. Bush and his administration towards the Soviet Union and the other countries of the Warsaw Pact. The article also focuses on two historically significant American foreign policy strategies that were implemented during the earlier years of the Cold War: containment and détente. The rapidly changing international environment and Bush’s Beyond Containment policy which, aimed to respond to these changes, became the basis for the following research questions: 1) How did American conception of foreign policy approach to Eastern Bloc countries such as Hungary or Poland change under the Bush administration in 1989 in comparison to the period of implementation of the containment or détente? 2) How did the American perception of the retreating Soviet power within the bipolar international structure affect American diplomatic relations with the Eastern European governments? The aim of the paper is to put Bush’s foreign policy in his first year in office in the American ‘Cold War’ foreign policy context and to compare the classical American political strategies with Bush’s foreign policy in 1989.